All about the Chinese New Year!

By Herbert Vego

 

“KUNG hei fat choy!”

“Kiong hee huat tsai!”

You will hear both Chinese New Year greetings today – the first in Cantonese (mainly spoken in Guandong, Hong Kong and Macau), the second in Fukien (from Fukien, China and its neighboring provinces).

The Chinese Lunar Year begins at sunset on the day of the second New Moon following the winter solstice (21st December). This means the New Year can begin anytime from January 21st through to February 21st. It falls on February 12 (today) this year.

 

While today is a special non-working holiday, it will not be as festive as the previous years’ because of the pandemic protocols. But let us still expect people in red attire to go out and have more fun while face-shielding and face-masking.

Our Chinese friends will be giving away angpao (a small red envelope with paper bill) as a way of sharing good fortune and sending good luck to recipients. Levity aside, I would not refuse one if given, lest the giver be insulted.

Will we also be seeing the luck-producing “Dragon and Lion” dances at the malls today? Perhaps it would depend on agreements with the local governments.

In the Dragon dance, up to 50 people line up, hold sticks under dragon skin and wiggle to the beat of Chinese music. They are led by a man holding a dragon ball. The dragon was the symbol of the Chinese emperors’ power, wisdom and productivity.

The Lion dance requires two persons spaced apart, dressed in the shape of the four-legged dancing animal with wiggling ears and blinking eyes.

The cycle of 12 animal signs descended from a Chinese folklore naming the year after them, following one another in an established order repeated every twelve years – rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.

While it is unclear when the celebration of the New Year began in China, the most popular version is that it started as a religious ceremony during the Shang Dynasty (1766 BC – 1122 BC).

Each year in the Chinese calendar is represented by one of 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac.  The present year 2021 is the year of the Ox, the 2nd animal after the Rat in the zodiac, which signifies movement. And so let’s hope to recover from the COVID pandemic and move on normally again.

The Ox New Year of 2021 falls today (February 12). The date varies every year because it coincides with the new moon that appears between Jan. 21 and Feb. 20.  In China, the Chinese

New Year marks the beginning of the 15-day Spring Festival, during which all family members get together, just like Christmas in the Philippines.

The Filipino culture has been influenced by prominent “Chinoys” – slang for Chinese-Filipino residents. Filipinos are known to partake in the celebration by means of having Chinese food and consulting fortune tellers for good luck.

Filipino-Chinese communities in the Philippines celebrate Chinese New Year every year, hoping to attract prosperity, closer family ties and peace. They clean their homes thoroughly, serve sweet foods and display various food and fruits on a table to invite good fortune.

We are awed by the success of Chinese-Filipinos in the business sector. Among the richest people in Asia are Chinese-Filipinos, such as the children of the late Henry Sy and of the late John Gokongwei, Tony Tan Caktiong, Lucio Tan and Andrew Tan.

 

RECALLING THE EVELIO JAVIER MURDER 

At about 11:00 a.m. of Feb. 11, 1986  (34 years ago yesterday), I was busy on the job as editor of Panay News (then a fledgling five-year-old weekly newspaper) when a Manila deskman from Reuters — of which I was regional correspondent — phoned, “Have you heard of the news? You must cover it.”

Now realizing I really had an urgent job to do but was running out of time, I thought of joining reporters of radio station DYRP in speeding full-speed to San Jose, Antique on their “patrol” jeep. The late Panay News publisher Danny Fajardo was also with us.

Two hours later, we were inside the bullet-riddled comfort room of a business establishment where Evelio Javier had been shot in cold blood. The floor of the CR was still drenched with blood, but the former governor’s remains had already been taken to the provincial hospital’s morgue for autopsy.

Back in Iloilo before 5:00, I typed my report fast under time pressure and reached Manila by telephone. It was the fastest way to transmit a story from Iloilo to Manila in those days.

I woke up the following day in time to see the Metro Manila newspapers being spread out on Iloilo sidewalks. Some of them carried my story — alongside a photograph of the lifeless Evelio — which began with three words — “Run, Evelio, run!” – quoted from an eyewitness who had desperately wanted to save Javier from hooded men who were chasing and shooting him from the capitol plaza to the toilet of a hardware store where he breathed his last.

My Reuters story also made it on the front pages of newspapers around the world.